


Two Deca-phoebs to Eternity

by anecdotalist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Keith's dad), Angst, Canonical Character Death, Fluff, Gen, Introspection, Krolia POV, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, at least for now, more tags to be added as applicable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-28 03:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15039335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anecdotalist/pseuds/anecdotalist
Summary: Keith and Krolia see each other's past and future and try to get to know each other's present self.Scenes from Keith and Krolia's two years on the space whale.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god, I never planned to write in this fandom, and I'm relatively new to it, but Season 6 just left me with some feels. So here's a collection of little moments in Keith and Krolia's lives. 
> 
> Head's up, it's gen for now but I am a Sheith shipper so that may come into play later. Hate in the comments will not be tolerated. If you don't like it, don't read it.
> 
> Glossary of terms for reference:  
> Tick ~ Second  
> Dobosh ~ Minute  
> Varga ~ Hour  
> Quintant ~ Day  
> Movement ~ Week  
> Phoeb ~ Month  
> Deca-phoeb ~ Year

It doesn’t take her long to realize that the glimpses of the past and future that they’re seeing aren’t entirely random. Her son—and being able to think that after all these deca-phoebs, when she didn’t think she’d ever be able to see him again, leaves her breathless—may have agreed to set aside his questions and focus on the mission at hand, but if he’s anything like her, there’s a part of him that would be running those questions through his mind until he’s gotten his answers. She would berate him for it but she’s been doing the same, only her questions are more along the lines of _how_ he ended up in space, caught up in a war that has nothing to do with him.

She gets her answers quintants after they landed on the massive whale’s back. Their priority had been to find shelter, food, and water. They’d taken turns keeping watch while the other slept, not knowing what to expect in this place and not trusting that the danger’s passed. So she hasn’t had a chance to ask him herself.

They’re cutting their way through some undergrowth when a flash of light from the quantum abyss washes over them and a scene plays out before them:

 

_Keith in the desert, looking through a pair of binoculars at where several ground vehicles surround a still-smoking crater. A tent is being erected and a flatbed truck is pulling up. Keith leans down to pick up a backpack and turns to get onto a (heart-achingly familiar) red hovercraft. He ties a handkerchief around his face to cover his nose and mouth, turns the hovercraft on, and takes off in the direction of the crash, but angling slightly away from it._

_Krolia understands when she sees him pull up at a random spot and take an explosive out of his pack. He sets it up on the ground, drives forward a couple of feet, sets up another one, and repeats the pattern several times. There’s nothing out here to blow up; this is a distraction._

_Finally, he appears satisfied and drives off in the direction he had come from, though he stops halfway and looks towards the encampment through the binoculars again. Then he pulls out a remote and detonates the bombs. As they go off, he revs the engine of the hovercraft and speeds towards the tent. A line of ground vehicles drive off in the direction of the explosions._

_When Keith parks the hovercraft in the shadow of a rock outcropping, there’s no one standing guard outside the tent. Krolia shakes her head at the lack of military discipline; if everyone had abandoned their posts like this in a Galran camp, they’d have been demoted or killed. But at least it means that Keith can enter the tent unimpeded here. There are three humans in protective suits standing inside and one strapped to a table. The three come at Keith and he takes them out beautifully: quick, efficient movements that make her proud._

_Then he runs up to the table and she sees with some shock that it’s the same human male they’d seen in an earlier vision, only now he’s unconscious. Keith gently turns his head towards him and his eyes widen with a mix of shock and confusion and hope. “Shiro?” he asks._

 

“Ulaz helped him escape and he came back to warn us about the Galra,” Keith explains softly without prompting when the vision fades. “I don’t know why the Garrison had him sedated but he said they wouldn’t even listen to him before they did that.”

“So that’s—” Her question’s cut off as another wave of light envelopes them.

 

_Keith, Shiro and three other humans are standing before the blue particle barrier protecting the Blue lion._

_“Maybe you just have to knock,” one of them says, and does rap his fist twice against the barrier. The lion’s eyes light up with a yellow glow and Krolia gasps along with the others as the barrier drops._

_She follows them up into the cockpit of the lion even as she wants to shake them all for their recklessness in entering a giant mystical mechanical robot just because it opened its mouth for them. She wants to shake them even more when that same human presses buttons on a console he can’t possibly know the functions of and the lion takes off through the walls of the cave it was hidden in._

_Then they launch into space, take on a Galra cruiser, and lead said cruiser on a chase to the end of their solar system before jumping through a wormhole._

 

“So that’s how you ended up in space,” she says faintly when the vision fades.

“Yeah.” Keith shrugs. “Well, if I hadn’t gotten kicked out of the Galaxy Garrison, I might have ended up here eventually anyway.”

She has so many questions she doesn’t know where to start—he enlisted with the Galaxy Garrison? What did his father think of that? And then he got kicked out? Why? What for?

“Anyway,” he says with a whack at a hanging vine, “that was Lance piloting Blue. But he switched over to Red after I started flying Black. Shiro was the Black paladin but he disappeared after a fight with Zarkon so I took over until we got him back.”

She blinks. “You’re a paladin of Voltron?”

“I was. I’m not anymore. The team doesn’t need me and I wanted to learn more about my galra half.” He says it matter-of-factly and she doesn’t know him well enough to know whether he’s hiding hurt under a facade or not.

“Quarter,” she says, focusing on the part that she can comment on with any authority. “I’m only half myself.”

This makes him look back at her with surprise. “You are?”

She nods. “That’s how I have the pink in my hair and the pupils in my eyes. That’s where you got the color of your eyes. Your father told me purple isn’t a human variant.”

He huffs out a laugh, sounding a little bitter. “No, it isn’t.”

There’s a story there, an unhappy one, but he doesn’t seem willing to share and she doesn’t know him well enough to push. Her heart feels like it’s being squeezed in her chest. This is her son, who she had left behind on Earth in hopes that he would grow up knowing nothing of the pains of war, and it seems that pains of a different sort found him instead. But he’s grown up strong in spite of it and she vows that if she were ever to get back to Earth, she’d find the ones who hurt him and pay them back in kind.

“What?” Keith asks her warily. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“My son is a brilliant fighter and a gifted pilot. Brave. Smart. Loyal. Can’t a mother just be proud?”

He ducks his head with a faint blush and mutters something under his breath. She doesn’t know if it’s a human reaction to praise or if it’s just a Keith reaction. She doesn’t know her son at all but gods willing, she’ll have a chance to get to know him now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krolia and Keith save and adopt a wolf pup. Or is adopted by one. Same difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has both fluff and angst. Also, new tag: canonical character death (Keith's dad).

A movement later, there’s another flash of light. This one isn’t a solar flare, though. It’s a streak of blue light trailing a comet that lands somewhere on the whale’s body. In silent accord, they start heading in towards it. It’s as good a direction as any and they should see the site of the crash before it grows old, in case there’s anything there.

As they draw near, they’re hit with a wave of strong emotion: fear.

Keith freezes where he stands, eyes widening in panic before narrowing in determination. He takes his knife out and awakens it.

Krolia nearly falls to her knees. Her heart starts pounding and she draws and readies her blaster.

When they reach the clearing created by the impact of the comet, there’s no sign of the comet itself. What they’re confronted with instead is a Kragylian wolf pup, surrounded by two large insectoid creatures.

Keith leaps forward and slashes at the one on the far end of the clearing so she tackles the one that’s closer. They need to work on their communication, she thinks to herself.

After the insectoids are killed, the fear abates, though there’s an undercurrent of wariness that lingers around them.

Her son drops to his knees in front of the wolf pup and holds out a hand to it with not a trace of fear or worry that he’s going to bite it off. “Hey there, little guy,” he coos, “there’s no need to be afraid. You’re safe now. We’ve got you.”

The pup stands up, gives himself a full-body shake that fluffs up his black, blue, and white fur, and pads towards him. Curiosity wars with the wariness coming from the pup as he sniffs at the hand that Keith holds still for him. He licks it and then, apparently satisfied, nudges into it until it rests on top of his head. Keith obligingly scratches behind his ears and he lets out a pleased yip, tail wagging frantically. The wariness has gone completely and in its place is a sense of contentment.

Keith looks up at her, eyes bright and hopeful.

She stifles a chuckle. “Yes, of course he can come with us.” She turns her attention to the carcasses and decides that they should be edible enough.

That night, as they’re eating around the fire in their cave, she tells him, “He’s a Kragylian wolf. They usually travel in packs. I don’t know how this one ended up on his own.” The pup looks between them with keen, intelligent eyes and gives a soft, mournful howl. A wave of grief washes over them.

“Are they, uh, empathic?” Keith asks with difficulty, sounding choked up from shared bereavement.

She winces. “It seems like it. Not much is known about them, they generally keep to themselves.”

The pup looks at them with his head tilted, as if he can tell that they can feel his emotions. Perhaps it’s a reflex, to project emotions. She hopes that he’ll grow out of it somehow. But she can also see how it could be used defensively and offensively so perhaps he won’t grow out of it, he’ll just grow into it. She hopes that he’ll stop projecting at _them_ at least.

“We should give him a name,” she says and the pup perks up, tail wagging.

Keith hums thoughtfully, and then asks, “Who’s Yorak?”

She startles but of course he would remember from that first vision. “My father,” she tells him. “Your grandfather. He was a Blade, but he died on a mission while I was still in the academy.” She had planned on serving alongside him, and instead she served in his memory. “Thace was able to retrieve his blade to give to me during my trials.” Keith pulls out the knife and gazes down at it. “Yes, that same one,” she says. She can’t tell what he’s thinking. “It’s Galran tradition to name a child after a deceased family member, so that they can carry on the legacy of the ones who have passed. The legacy of serving the Galran Empire, of course.”

“But you didn’t do that.” He looks at her with questions in his eyes and these she can read. _Why not? Did she think he would be unworthy of her father’s legacy as a Blade?_

“No, I didn’t. When your father suggested ‘Keith’ instead, it made me realize that you had a chance to start with a clean slate on a planet whose existence the Galra were entirely unaware of. I’m proud that you’re a Blade now but I didn’t want to tie you to a legacy of fighting in a secret war.”

He nods slowly, then looks towards the wolf pup and back to her. “What do you think about giving him that name?”

She eyes the pup, who gathers himself and sits up straight, tail curled around his feet. His bright eyes lock onto hers and he feels...eager. She smiles. “I think he would be proud to have you named after him.” The pup, she swears, _preens_.

“That’s settled, then.” He goes back to alternately feeding bits of meat to the pup and eating his own meal.

“Your father must be worried sick,” she says, kicking herself for not realizing sooner. “It didn’t look like you had a chance to tell him what was happening before you got into the Blue lion and you’ve been gone from Earth for how long now?”

Keith looks pained and she wonders if maybe he hasn’t even considered how his absence would be affecting his father. How typical of children. But then he says, “Dad, uh, dad died. Years ago.”

“What?” she gasps. She nearly drops the rounded shell she’s been using as a makeshift bowl. “No.” She feels like she’s been punched in the gut. There’s a rushing sound in her ears.

“Car accident,” he says, sounding almost sorry to be telling her this news. And that...that isn’t right. It shouldn’t be him comforting her for her loss when she wasn’t there for him when it happened. He snorts and spits out, “Ironic, that everyone kept telling me the hovercraft was a deathtrap and how I should be more careful with it when it was a _regular car_ that got him killed.”

The pup—Yorak—whines and looks back and forth between them, sitting on opposite sides of the fire. He looks like he’s torn over who to go comfort.

She shakes her head at him. _Stay with Keith_ , she thinks and he does. Did he hear her thought? She hopes not. An empathic _and_ telepathic wolf would just be too much. She takes a steadying breath. “I see,” she says shakily on the exhale and bows her head over the remains of her food, appetite completely gone.

They don’t talk anymore the rest of the night but later, when Keith’s sleeping and Yorak’s curled up at his back and she’s sitting watch, she lets herself think of him, of the human man she fell in love with and wanted to stay on Earth for. They’re due for a solar flare and as one washes over her, she holds him in the forefront of her mind.

 

_Keith stands before a gray stone grave marker that’s nearly as tall as he is. His hands are closed into fists at his sides and there are tears in his eyes._

_Krolia doesn’t have any reference for human children to compare him to but she knows that he was too young to have lost the only parent he had._

_He doesn’t move for the entirety of the vision and neither does she._

 

When the cave fades back into view around her, it’s blurred by the tears in her eyes. She blinks and they slide down her cheeks unchecked. Grief hangs heavy in the air but this time, it’s all hers.

A couple of feet away, Keith draws in a ragged breath.

Another flare hits them.

 

_Keith is standing at the side of a bed that his father is laying on, unconscious, with tubes down his throat and wires connecting him to various monitors that beep steadily. There’s a human female in a suit sitting a respectful distance away, watching Keith with solemn eyes. Keith looks fragile, too fragile. Krolia reaches a hand out to him but she can’t touch him in the vision._

_“Dad?” he whispers. “Please wake up. Please be okay.” There’s no response. Gingerly, he touches a spot on the back of his hand that’s clear of wires or needles or electrodes._

_Suddenly the monitors speed up. Keith looks up wildly, with hope in his eyes. “Dad?”_

_Then an alarm goes off._

_Seconds later, a group of humans rush into the room, wheeling a cart and calling out rapid-fire questions and responses. One of them pulls Keith away from the bed, not unkindly. “Get him out of here,” she tells the woman in the suit. “He shouldn’t be watching this.”_

_The woman stands, eyes wide. She takes Keith’s hand and starts to tug him towards the door. “Come on, Keith. Let’s wait outside while the doctors work.”_

_“What—No. No, no, no. No! Wait. Dad! Let me go!” Keith shouts, trying to pull out of her grip. When she doesn’t relent, he digs his heels in. “Stop, I want to stay! Let me stay with my dad! I’m not gonna go. Please!” He turns his head but his father’s bed is surrounded by people and he can’t see him. “Dad!” he screams as he’s pulled out of the room and the door closes._

_Eventually, the door opens again and people file out. Keith and the woman are sitting on chairs in the hallway, Keith watching the door intently. Some of the people exiting the room avoid making eye contact with him, others look at him with pity. One—an older male with dark skin color and white hair wearing a long white coat—gestures for Keith and the woman to follow him into another room. There’s no bed in this one, just chairs and small tables._

_The man kneels on the floor facing Keith. “Keith,” he says gently._

_“No,” Keith says, eyes wide with horror._

_“Keith, I’m so sorry but your father—”_

_“No! You’re lying!” Behind him, the woman covers her mouth. Her eyes shine with unshed tears._

_“I wish I was. His injuries were too severe. We couldn’t save him. I’m sorry.”_

_Keith shakes his head. “No, I don’t believe it. He was right there! I saw him. He’s okay. He has to be!” He turns and runs but the woman drops to her knees and catches him up in her arms._

_“He’s gone, Keith,” she says, pulling him into a hug. “I’m sorry.”_

_“No! Let go of me!” He closes one hand into a fist and pounds it against her shoulder. “I hate you! Let go! I have to go see him. Let me see him. Dad!” Then a sob breaks out and it wracks his small body. He shakes with his tears, hiccuping as he tries and fails to gulp in air._

 

The vision fades and Krolia bites down on the heel of her hand to hold back a sob of her own.

She dares to glance over at her son and nearly cries out. He’s still lying curled up on his side, back to her, but he’s visibly trembling. Yorak is no longer curled next to him; he’s draped over him.

She can’t move to go to him, she doesn’t even know if he would welcome it. Her heart aches with grief.

After a few minutes of inner turmoil, she pushes herself off the wall she’s been leaning against and stumbles the few steps over to slide down against the wall near Keith. She keeps her distance, gets only close enough that she can stretch out a hand and place it against his back. He stiffens. He doesn’t move, either away or closer, but he allows the touch.

They have each other, at least, though she doesn’t know yet what that means for them.

Together, they mourn in silence for a man they both loved and lost.

In the morning, when Keith wakes and asks why she didn’t switch out with him for watch, she hugs him tightly and says, “I’m sorry,” and she means ‘I’m sorry you lost him,’ ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there,’ ‘I’m sorry you went through that alone.’

After a moment, he hugs her back, tentatively. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, but it’s not and she doesn’t know how she could make it up to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you're probably thinking: Wait, the space wolf teleports! It's not supposed to have empathy!
> 
> We'll get there but hear me out first: We only see the wolf teleporting to Keith and Krolia so I'm headcanoning here that he can do that because he's formed a bond with them. So it's not necessarily general empathy per se...


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Krolia starts to get to know Shiro, in a way.

She fashions two blades for them out of fallen tree branches and sets up a regular sparring schedule.

“We need to keep our skills sharp. We don’t know what will be waiting for us at the end of this,” she tells Keith and he agrees readily. They also need some way to use up the vargas in a quintant; and this is also one of the few ways she can think of to start building a relationship with her son.

So they spar. He’s good, and he’s nearly as good with his weaker hand as he is with his dominant hand. “Shiro always insisted that I learn to fight with both, just in case I ever needed to,” he tells her spontaneously one quintant. She takes it as a good sign that they’re getting close enough that he feels he can tell her things about his past that aren’t absolutely necessary for her to know for the sake of the mission.

“He taught you to fight?” She isn’t surprised, though. After only a couple of movements, she can tell that Shiro played an important role in Keith’s life.

“Just sword-fighting. I taught myself the knife when I was younger.”

She frowns but doesn’t say anything. There aren’t any good reasons why a child would have to teach themselves how to use a weapon. But it’s not her place to comment on that now. She does, however, take it upon herself to help him improve his skills.

“You rush in too quickly,” she tells him between bouts one quitant. “You should be more patient. Let your opponent make the first move.”

“Right,” Keith says, turning and walking back to his mark in the clearing. Yorak is sleeping in a small patch of sunlight along the outer edge. “Patience yields focus.” He mutters it almost as if it’s a mantra.

In their subsequent matches, he does make a visible effort to assess before engaging.

The next time they’re expecting a solar flare, they decide to gather herbs while they wait so that it doesn’t catch them mid-fight. They’ve determined the pattern of the flares—a burst of two or three every four quintants—and have narrowed the timing down to within a quintant but haven’t been able to get any more accurate than that.

Given how often they’ve been sparring, it’s no surprise to her when the first vision of the past is of a younger Keith and a Shiro with hair that’s all brown and no metal prosthetic. Both are in loose black pants and sleeveless shirts, hair plastered to their foreheads with sweat, wooden practice blades in their hands.

 

_Keith launches himself at Shiro with a yell and a flurry of strikes. Shiro blocks but is pushed back towards the wall and Keith’s eyes gleam with anticipation. But Shiro ducks under one of his swings and comes up behind him. The bout ends quickly after a few more strokes, with Shiro pointing the tip of his sword at Keith’s heart._

_“Ugh,” Keith groans with a disgusted look._

_Shiro chuckles. “You did great.”_

_“Really? You won two out of three.”_

_“Yeah, but you’re making me work for it more now.”_

_Keith gives him a disbelieving look._

_“Come on, you’ll get better. Just be patient and keep working on it. Patience yields focus.” Then he smiles brightly and says, “But even when you do get better, you should let me have this. You’re already beating all of my simulator scores.”_

_Now Keith grins, a little shyly. “Not_ all _.”_

_Shiro rolls his eyes; a smile lingers at the corner of his lips. “Right. There’s still a couple of my scores hanging in there. Which I got as a senior cadet. And you’re—what, only nine months into your first year?” He claps a hand to Keith’s shoulder and starts to steer him towards a rack on the wall where other blades are resting. “You’re a prodigy, Keith. I knew it as soon as I saw you on that hoverbike of yours.”_

_Keith just shakes his head, cheeks red._

_Shiro clears his throat and his expression becomes more serious. “So, listen. This weekend, it’s the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing. I’ve got to go home, visit his grave, pay my respects. If anyone gives you trouble, get Professor Montgomery, okay? She’s going to be on all weekend.”_

_“Alright,” Keith says softly._

_“Hey, you okay? Is anyone else bothering you?” Shiro leans down to try to catch his eyes with a frown of concern._

_Keith shrugs, shakes his head. “No, not since...you know.”_

_“Okay, good.”_

_“I’ll be fine. I’ve got a lot of homework to do anyway. I’ll try not to get kicked out before you’re back.”_

_“They’d be idiots to kick you out, Keith. You’re the best pilot in the Garrison.”_

_As Keith shakes his head, the image fades out._

 

“Patience yields focus,” Krolia repeats. “Was that the Garrison’s signature?”

Keith drops a mushroom into a basket they’ve woven out of leaf fronds. “No, that’s just something Shiro likes to say.”

The next flash is shaky, like the ground they’re standing on is breaking apart.

 

_It’s Shiro with a white forelock of hair glaring at her with red eyes. He brings his glowing right hand up and closes it into a fist and a purple energy blade extends from it. He charges forward and as he does so, she hears Keith’s voice saying, “Shiro, I know you’re in there.”_

_An accented female’s voice says, “You’ll be the only one on the other side.”_

_“Do it!” Keith’s voice calls out. Then, “Shiro!”_

_Then there’s a thrum of energy that she can hear and feel, a scream, the sound of explosions, and a burst of pink-tinged white light._

 

She blinks the image away. That must have been a glimpse of the future, probably directly connected with the first image of Shiro she’d seen.

“Something’s going to happen to him,” Keith moans. “Something really bad. We have to get back before it does. We have to stop it.”

“It may not necessarily come to pass” she says, remembering Shiro’s red eyes. “I suspect that’s why the visions of the future are shakier and more jumbled than those of the past. The events are uncertain and they can still be changed.”

“You think so?”

“Of course. Why bother making an effort to do anything otherwise? If the future’s already written out? We forge our own paths, for good or bad.”

Keith nods, falling into contemplative silence. She gives him his space, and wanders over to inspect a bush with berries growing on it. They look juicy but are they safe or are they poisonous? She frowns at it and uses her wrist scanner to analyze them. They could use more variety in their diet. The scanner beeps after a few seconds with the results. She reads through them and then shuts off the screen. The berries should be safe for her; and if Keith shares the same dietary requirements and restrictions as his father did, then it should be safe for him as well. Excellent.

“What happened—or will happen—to Shiro. Have you seen anything like that? He wasn’t acting like himself. And his eyes….”

She purses her lips and looks over at her son, who’s sitting against a tree, basket forgotten at his feet, Yorak brushing against his leg. “The only thing I can think of,” she starts slowly, hesitantly, “is the witch Haggar. Nobody knows the full extent of her power. She and Zarkon had been trying to get Voltron for thousands of years. Perhaps she’s figured out a way to influence Shiro so that she can make him bring it to her.”

Keith grimaces. “You mean mind control?”

“You said he’s the Black paladin, right?” At his nod, she continues, “Then controlling him means that she would have control over Voltron itself.”

He shudders. “That’s….” Then he presses his lips firmly together and looks resolute. “I won’t let that happen. I won’t let anything happen to Shiro.”

Yes, this Shiro is quite important to her son. She can’t wait to meet him.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Krolia and Keith learn that Yorak can teleport.

They don’t spend all their time together. By unspoken accord, they do stay near each other and near the cave on the quintants they’re expecting a solar flare. But on the other quintants, they split off on separate tasks after their two vargas of sparring—alternating hand-to-hand with bladework—in the mornings.

Keith had headed in the direction of the mountains to gather some root vegetables while she and Yorak had followed the stream that passes near the cave to look for fruits this quintant. Yorak is growing rapidly and, unless her eyes deceive her, Keith seems to have gained a bit of height as well. They may need to expand their area of cultivation so that they don’t deplete what’s around them. She runs calculations in her head and frowns; Keith is young. Young enough to not be finished growing. Which makes him far too young to be going on missions for the Blade. Especially alone.

“I’m going to have to speak with Kolivan about this,” she murmurs to herself.

Yorak twitches one of his ears back, as if he’s listening to her. Then he crouches down and springs at a small flying insect. It’s one of the ones with multi-colored nearly translucent wings and it zips away between Yorak’s outstretched paws. The wolf whines and looks saddened.

Krolia stifles a chuckle at his woebegone expression. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll get it next time.”

He perks up as if he really understood her.

It’s when they’re resting beneath the shade of a leafy tree several vargas later that it happens: Yorak stiffens as if he’s spotted something dangerous. Then he paws at the ground with a whimper. Then he disappears.

She blinks at the spot where he’d just been standing, stunned. “Yorak?” Her heart starts to race. “Yorak!” What happened to him? Did something take him? How did he disappear like that? She jerks her head from one side to another, trying in vain to catch a glimpse of him among the trunks of the trees around them. She scrambles up and initiates the standard search pattern that the military always used.

What feels like an eternity later but in reality is likely only a couple of doboshes, Yorak reappears. He barks at her and _he_ sounds and feels frantic. He runs up to her and nudges her legs.

She drops to her knees and throws her arms around him relief. “Hey boy, what happened? Thank the gods you’re okay.” He’s restless in her grip, though, and pulls away only to circle behind her and nudge her again. She frowns and twists, trying to keep an eye on him. “What is it, Yorak? Did you find something? Is it dangerous?”

He’s insistent and only lets up when she stands and takes a hesitant step in the direction he had been pushing her towards. He runs ahead a bit and then stops and looks back at her like he’s waiting for her to follow him.

She takes another step and then she realizes where they’re headed: the mountains. She gasps. “Is it Keith? Did something happen to him?” Her stomach clenches up with dread. Yorak yips at the mention of Keith and runs in a small, tight circle, and that’s all she needs to start sprinting. Once he seems satisfied that she’s gotten the message, he disappears again. She hopes that it’s intentional, and that he’s going to Keith. She prays that her son is okay.

She pulls up the digital map of the area that they’ve put together over the past few phoebs and sees to her relief that Keith’s red dot is still blinking steadily. He’s not at any acute risk, then. She adjusts the magnification until she can see her own purple dot as well and leaves the image projecting so that she can track her path and make sure that it will intersect with Keith’s.

Yorak appears a couple of times at her side as she’s running, only for a few ticks each time before disappearing again.

When she finally gets out from under the canopy of the tree branches, she breathes a sigh of relief and activates her suit’s jetpack. She makes straight for Keith’s dot, frowning when she sees that it’s only moved a little since she first saw it. Has he been backed into a corner by predators? Did he break his leg? Why isn’t he moving?

She finally spots him: standing, but leaning heavily against the mountain face. Yorak is standing next to him, looking as worried as a canine could look. “Keith!” she calls out, landing next to him and grabbing his shoulder. “Are you alright? Yorak—”

“I’m fine, Krolia. I tried to tell him that but he wouldn’t listen. Sorry you had to come all the way over here.” He sounds a little out of breath, a little annoyed, and a little flustered.

“Of course I came,” she says. “I was worried about you. What happened?”

He points his thumb at a pile of large rocks behind them. “Just a bit of a rockslide that I got caught in. It’s nothing. My jetpack’s busted and I think my ankle’s sprained but I’m fine otherwise.”

“Your ankle? Let me see.” She’s starting to bend down and reach for it when he stiffens and snaps, “I’m _fine_. I already checked it.” She backs off quickly. Is this—she doesn’t know whether she should push the issue, if he’s reacting this way because he’s in pain or because he’s used to not having anyone with him to help him or because he still doesn’t feel comfortable with her.

She decides to err on the side of giving him space. Keith’s standing, though he’s favoring his right foot, and his vitals are stable according to his suit’s monitors so he’s not bleeding out somewhere. She wills her own heart rate to slow back down. “Okay,” she says calmly, “alright. At least let me help you get back to the cave.”

He bites his lip and she holds her breath. Then he says, only a little grudgingly, “Okay.” So she moves over to his right side and wraps an arm around his waist to steady him; he drops his arm from where it had been braced against the face of the mountain onto her shoulders. In truth, she could pick him up completely and carry him down the mountain but she feels that he wouldn’t be as accepting of that.

“I don’t suppose you know how to fix a jetpack?” he asks tentatively as they’re making their way slowly back to their cave and she takes it as a peace offering.

“The technology is probably similar to the one in my suit. We can try to reverse-engineer it and use that as a model,” she muses.

“....You’re not going to start talking in engineering jargon, are you? Because I’m just a pilot.”

She chuckles. “I’m not an engineer either. I just know some of the basics. Hopefully it’s enough. And you're more than 'just' a pilot."

They walk in silence for a few doboshes. It’s quite nice out; the atmosphere created by these whale-like creatures has led to mild weather patterns which she’s thankful of. She watches Yorak run ahead a few steps and investigate a bush.

“So, our wolf can teleport,” she says, because one of them has to say it.

“Apparently so,” Keith says.

“Pretty cool, huh?” She grins and tilts her head enough so she can make eye contact.

“Yeah,” he says with an answering grin; the pinched look in his eyes eases. “It is.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Shiro play Go and talk.

_Keith and Shiro sit opposite each other at a table, a flat wooden square with black grid lines between them. Scattered across the board is a collection of white and black stones, arranged at the intersections of the lines. Shiro seems to be contemplating his next move, index fingers steepled together in front of his lips as he hunches over the table. Keith has an elbow propped up on the table and his head resting against his upraised palm. He watches Shiro with a soft look in his eyes. One that makes Krolia swallow with the familiarity of it._

_Shiro finally places a white piece down and removes a black piece.  Keith sits up and frowns while Shiro leans back with a satisfied smile._

_“So, about the Kerberos mission,” Shiro starts._

_Keith looks over at him, eyebrows arched. “What about it? You feeling nervous?”_

_“A bit, but not about the mission itself.”_

_Keith sighs and rolls his eyes. “I’ll be fine, Shiro. You’ve been gone on other missions before.”_

_“Yeah, but this one will be much longer.”_

_“I haven’t needed you to bail me out of trouble this whole year. I think I can manage a couple more months until you get back,” Keith says dryly. Then he takes on a more serious tone. “This is a big deal for you, Shiro. Don’t worry about me. Just focus on the mission. I promise I’ll still be here, at the Garrison, when you get back.”_

_“Okay, that’s—” Shiro cuts himself off with a shake of his head “—that’s good.”_

_“Yeah, I mean, even if they kick me out, I’ll just hang out on campus until they call the cops on me.” Keith grins cheekily._

_Shiro groans and covers his face with his hands. “Oh my god, I’m going to get back to Earth and my first stop will have to be the jail to bail you out, isn’t it?”_

_Keith snorts and returns to studying the board. Shiro lets him, dropping his hands and watching him in turn. After he makes a move, Shiro says, “You’ll come to the launch with me right?”_

_“Of course.”_

_“Good,” Shiro says with a grin. He takes a look at the board and makes a face. “You should really consider the command track for next year.”_

_Keith’s brows furrow. “Why? Because I’m decent at this game? It’s just a game.”_

_“It’s a centuries-old game requiring complex strategy. But, no. Because I think you’ll be good at it.”_

_Keith scoffs and waves a hand dismissively. “Who would follow_ my _command? I’m just the troublemaker who sits in the back corner of the room and scowls all the time.”_

_Now Shiro frowns. “That’s not true. You shouldn’t listen to what other people are saying about you. They don’t know you.”_

_“I mean, they’re not wrong. Not entirely.”_

_“Yeah they are,” Shiro argues. “You may have been that person in the past but that was years ago. And these people didn’t even know you then. They’re just making assumptions based on, I don’t know, the fact that you drive a red hoverbike and wear fingerless gloves.”_

_Keith shrugs. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to lead a team. I just want to fly. Put me in the pilot seat, tell me where to go, and I’ll get you there. That’s it.”_

_Shiro’s lips twist unhappily. “I just think you could do so much more. I mean, you’re a brilliant pilot, you know that. But still, I think there are bigger things in your future than just flying a ship.”_

_Keith groans. “Okay. If I tell you I’ll think about it, will you drop it?”_

_“Are you actually going to think about it?”_

_“_ Yes _."_

_“Okay, then. Consider it dropped.” Shiro looks smugly pleased. Keith narrows his eyes at him._

 

“That was the last chance we had to play a game before Shiro’s launch,” Keith comments as the vision fades.

Krolia blinks the last vestiges of it away and has a moment of disorientation when she sees their own makeshift board with its various pebbles. Keith had needed something to occupy himself while he was on enforced rest for his sprained ankle so he’d come up with the idea of carving out a grid on the largest piece of bark Krolia had been able to find and bring back. Then he’d taught her the game that he and Shiro had enjoyed playing together when they needed a break from schoolwork. Instead of sparring in the mornings, they’d been playing this game.

“So I was thinking—my ankle’s feeling much better. Maybe tomorrow—”

“No,” she says.

“Come on! It’s been a week already!” He bends his foot as if to show that it’s fully healed.

A ‘week’, she reminds herself, is about the equivalent of a movement. “And I said three to be safe. Keith, we can’t afford for you to injure it further. It looked like just a mild injury but all we have here are each other and neither one of us are healers or medics.”

Keith slumps back against the wall and blows out a breath. “I know,” he says. “I just hate not being able to do anything.”

“I know,” Krolia says, reaching out and patting him on the knee. “It’ll only be a little longer. Patience yields focus.”

Keith frowns. “I don’t think that really applies in this situation."

“Oh well.” She shrugs. “I like it.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith tries to teach Yorak how to play fetch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meant to post this yesterday but I was so tired I kept falling asleep while I was writing it. So here it is now, and hopefully there will be another one later today because I'm trying for a snippet a day with this.
> 
> Also, thanks to everyone who's been reading along!

She turns away from surveying the area around their cave and watches Keith and Yorak. They’d decided to make this quintant a rest one and stay near home even though there’s no solar flare expected; they have enough provisions stored away to last a couple of quintants and by now, they’ve explored enough of this place that they feel comfortable settling in. There’s no telling how much longer they’re going to be here but given that all of the glimpses of the future they’ve seen take place elsewhere, they know that it won’t be for the rest of their lives at least.

Keith’s spent the morning trying to teach Yorak a game. He waves a stick in front of Yorak’s face and then throws it as far as he can into the woods. “Go on, boy! Fetch!”

Yorak watches him attentively and curiously but shows no signs of wanting to chase after the stick. He reaches up to Keith’s hip now; Krolia can’t believe how much he’s grown in just a couple of phoebs. She eyes her son consideringly as well. They’d adjusted his suit once already to accommodate his now broader shoulders and taller frame. She thinks it’ll be okay for a little longer but she makes a note to ask him later if it feels too tight again. She expects that he’ll grow quite a bit more, given how tall her father had been.

She leaps down carefully from the crest of the hill that is the top of their cave. “How’s it going?”

Keith shakes his head. “Not good. He just doesn’t seem to be able to understand the game.”

She frowns. “But why would he want to fetch a stick?”

“It’s—I don’t know, it’s just something that people with dogs like to do. Helps them get their exercise or something. And it’s supposed to be fun.” He directs the last sentence down to Yorak who doesn’t seem to mind that he apparently isn’t understanding how to have fun. Keith shrugs at her. “I don’t know. One of the foster families I was put with—they had a neighbor with a dog and I used to watch their kids playing in the yard with her. It looked fun.” He sounds wistful and it tugs painfully at her heart.

Krolia hums thoughtfully and looks between Yorak and the trees surrounding them. She spies one of the many long-eared, bushy-tailed mammalian creatures that populate this area among the tall grasses some distance away and has an idea. “Let me try,” she tells Keith, who nods and hands over a stick. “No, give me your knife.”

He looks bemused but gives her his blade, currently in its sealed state. She leaves it like that and grips it by the blade itself, just under the hilt. She hefts it, takes aim, and sends it spinning through the air, watching with satisfaction as it hits its mark before the creature even has time to react. “Go fetch, Yorak!” she tells their wolf and he lopes off eagerly.

Keith gapes. “Is it the knife or the fact that it’s food that he’s getting?”

Krolia shrugs. “Either one could be true.” They don’t have a different blade to test out, though she supposes she could use her blaster to kill something and see if he’ll still get that. But this way gives Keith an approximation of that childhood experience he only saw other human children having so she doesn’t bring it up as an option.

Yorak clamps his jaws around the carcass and turns to look at them. He takes one step forward and in the next second has phased out from where he was standing and reappeared right in front of them. He drops the body at her feet and wags his tail.

“Good boy,” she praises, ruffling his fur. Yorak thumps his tail hard against the ground and Keith laughs. She pulls the knife out of the carcass and holds it out to her son. “Do you want to do the next one? We’ll need one more for dinner.”

He takes it with a grin and his eyes look bright; it’s the most carefree she’s seen him so far. She feels a little bit of that guilt she’s always carried with her about leaving him ease. “Yeah,” he says, biting his lip. Then he adds, a little hesitant, “Thanks...mom.” He turns quickly to scan their surroundings before she can respond which is just as well because she just freezes.

 _Mom_. She replays it in her head, heart pounding. _Mom_. She hadn’t thought she’d ever get to hear him call her that, had told herself that she was lucky she’s even getting the chance to know him just as a fellow Blade and that she shouldn’t expect anything more, but still a part of her deep down had hoped and now….

Keith throws the knife and it hits something a little further into the woods than her own target had been. “Go fetch, Yorak!” he calls out and the wolf sprints off.

Krolia steps up to his side and wraps an arm around his shoulders, tugging him in against her. “Thanks, son,” she murmurs. He doesn’t say anything but he does rest his head against her shoulder.

She thanks the gods for this chance they’ve been given and vows to make the most of it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith tells Krolia about the Red lion and they talk about Voltron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thace ended up with a bigger part in this fic than originally planned, oops.
> 
> So immediately after I said that I was trying to write and post a snippet of this every day, I realized that that's actually probably going to be slowing down now, because I'm running low on scenes I want to include in this.

“When did you learn Galran?” she asks Keith. Outside, rain pours down heavily, obscuring the view. It’s been raining for a movement straight and doesn’t show signs of letting up. Sometimes, there’s a strong wind or lightning and thunder that accompany the rain but there’s none of that this quintant; just constant rainfall. The temperatures may not change drastically from hot to cold on this whale, but the seasons evidently do go from dry to wet.

She glances over at their dwindling stores with concern. The torrential downpours have no doubt driven all of the prey in the area into hiding, just as it did them. But perhaps when it’s lightened up a bit, she and Keith can gather more fruits and vegetables.

Yorak lies curled up by the fire, still bedraggled from his most recent foray out into the rain to relieve himself. His eyes flick between them as they ask each other questions, in their newest game, which Keith had called ‘20 Questions.’ Krolia is pretty sure that by now, they’ve both exceeded the twenty question allotment. But they’ve already played several rounds of Keith’s strategy game, then several rounds of her strategy game, then they’d each recounted human and galran myths and folklore.

Keith laughs nervously. “I, uh, didn’t.”

“But you’re speaking it now,” she points out. “You’ve been speaking it to me since I met you.”

“Yeah...so, don’t freak out,” he prefaces and she prepares herself to ‘freak out’ because any explanation that starts with that…. “Red gave it to me.”

She bolts up and looks sharply at him, reclining casually against the wall. “What?” she demands. “Red _gave_ it to you? Red as in the Red lion? _How?_ ”

“Well, when Blue first woke up, she gave us all a memory dump of what Voltron is and how she fits into it. When I went to get Red on that Galra ship, she wouldn’t respond to me. At first, I thought she was waiting for me to prove myself. But when she let me in and we connected, she gave me a memory dump of the Galra language. And then I realized that maybe she just didn’t understand what I was saying before. It’s not like she’s ever met a human before me.” He shrugs. “Or maybe she really was waiting to see if I would fight off Galra soldiers for her. And then when I ended up in space with them, she decided that was good enough. I’m not sure. She’s never given me a straight answer on that.”

Krolia pinches the bridge of her nose. She’s not even sure where to start with that. “How—”

“She’s really great though. She’s awesome,” Keith hurries to add. “She’s super fast and she loves doing aerial maneuvers. She’s pretty much indestructible. You’d like her. She’s really protective. She’s saved me so many times.”

Krolia slumps back and leans her head back against the wall. Eyeing the ceiling, she says in resignation, “I want you to tell me about each and every one of those times.”

“Uh, why?” Keith sounds hesitant. And worried.

“So that when I meet her, I’ll know exactly what I have to thank her for.” As Keith launches, a little too enthusiastically, into the stories, she realizes that what she has to thank the Red lion for is _a lot_. She’s glad she’s hearing this all after the fact, when she knows that Keith’s okay. And Keith gets this from her, she knows. He may have inherited his father’s hoverbike and love of the color red but that recklessness and that tendency to act before thinking and that fierce independence that leads to him doing whatever he thinks is right regardless of what his orders are...is all her.

When the solar flare comes, it’s not a vision of the Red lion or Voltron from the past that they see. It’s a brief glimpse of the future:

 

_One of them is sitting in a black cockpit that’s lit up by purple-tinted screens and a console that glows a bright purple. Outside the viewscreens, stars and asteroids are flying by._

_“Who’s got eyes on Shiro?” Keith’s voice cries out, sounding hoarse and desperate._

_Then their forward momentum is suddenly halted._

 

“No,” Keith groans, burying his face in his hands. “No, not—I can’t.”

“What?” she asks, trying to make sense of it.

“That was the Black lion. Shiro must have been taken. Or will be taken. Again. The last time I piloted Black, it was because of that. We didn’t have Shiro and there was no one else Black would accept. But I couldn’t hold the team together, we were barely able to form Voltron. I can’t lead them. I don’t know how to lead. I’m barely even a team player.”

“Okay, stop,” she says firmly. She can’t keep listening to her son tear himself down. “You’ve been working with Kolivan for a deca-phoeb. It’s not as formal as taking leadership classes at the academy but I can show you those memories. You’ve at least got some experiential training. And we’ve got time. We can make you a leader. Not everyone who is one was born with that kind of knowledge or skill. Let’s just think about what we’ve been shown. Take this step by step. Like we’re planning a mission.”

He takes a deep breath and makes a conscious effort to relax. “Right. Okay.”

“What do we know?” she prompts him.

“We know—”

Another flare envelopes them.

 

_“What do we know?” Kolivan rumbles, arms crossed while he looks down at a table over which a four-dimensional map of the galaxy is displayed._

_It takes her a second to decide that the person in the Blade of Marmora uniform standing in front of him, with their back to her, is actually her and not Keith. The figure is too tall to be Keith, though the hair is nearly identical. This must have been from over a hundred deca-phoebs ago, before she grew out her hair and decided to keep it long._

_“The supply ship is going to come out of hyperspace here and fly along this route,” her younger self says, drawing a line between planets. “It’ll re-enter hyperspace at these coordinates.” She marks out the spot with an ‘X’. “These will be the best places for us to fly in and infiltrate undetected.” She draws in little arrows at three different places along the flight path._

_“Good,” Kolivan says. “Who will you take with you?”_

_“Thace.”_

_“No. Pick someone else.”_

_Krolia can’t see her other self’s face but she knows that she’s frowning. “Why can’t I take Thace?”_

_“You always take Thace. You must learn to work with others.”_

_There’s a pause and then she says, “Morane. She’s a good pilot, she’ll be able to get us in.”_

_Kolivan nods. “Fine. Go brief her and prepare to depart in two quintants.”_

 

Keith blinks “—uh, I lost my train of thought.”

Krolia shakes her head, trying to dislodge the memories brought about by the vision. She’d gone with Morane and they’d successfully completed the mission. But when she returned, feeling triumphant, she learned that Thace was being assigned to a long-term undercover operation. It had felt like a punch in the gut. He was her closest connection to her father that she had among the Blades; her father’s friend who brought back his blade to give to her and who mentored her because her father wasn’t able to do so himself.

Light flashes again.

 

_“Thace? I’m Keith, a paladin of Voltron.” Keith stands in front of a console with his Marmora blade extended. He’s wearing a white armored space suit with red accents._

_Thace stares at the sword in his hands while Keith is introducing himself and Krolia knows that he recognizes it. Each blade is unique, after all. He doesn’t mention anything about its origins to Keith, though. He just says, “And a fellow Blade, I see.”_

_There must be a timeskip because she next sees Thace standing at the console and Keith next to it, looking down into the depths of a power conduit chute._

_“Go, now,” Thace orders._

_“What? No, I’m not going to leave you.” He stands and looks like he’s ready to plant himself in front of Thace until he gives in._

_“You must. I will shut down the system.” His voice softens. “Paladin, this is where_ my _journey ends. But as a member of Voltron, you have a bigger mission. You must understand that.”_

_Keith looks down and Krolia holds her breath. Then he meets Thace’s eyes resolutely. “It was an honor to meet you.”_

 

Krolia swallows. “Was that….” She can’t finish the question but Keith seems to know what she’s asking anyway. He nods.

“He stayed behind and set off the explosion. Nothing could have survived it.”

She presses her lips together. He must have wondered who Keith was and how he’d managed to be in possession of her sword. She’d never had a chance to tell him what had happened to her on Earth.

“He was the second Blade to sacrifice himself so that Voltron could keep going,” Keith says softly. “Why? They didn’t even know us.” When Krolia looks over, he’s hunched over himself, arms hugging his knees tightly to his chest.

“Emperor Zarkon ruled the galaxy for ten thousand….years. Years?” At Keith’s confirming nod that she’s using the right term, she continues. “The Blade of Marmora have been trying to fight back for several hundred of those years. But with very little progress. Many of the worlds conquered by the Galra had long given up hope of ever regaining their freedom; some forgot what it was like before Zarkon ruled everything. Voltron became a legend, almost. Some of the older Galra remembered it from before, but over time, the details became blurred and Voltron’s reputation became larger than life. We all needed something to believe in, something to give us hope. Voltron became that for us.” She shrugs. “How well it lives up to the myth we’ll have to see. But whoever controls Voltron would rule the galaxy.”

Keith frowns. “That’s what Kolivan said.”

“Well, who would challenge Voltron?”

“No one, I guess.” He looks troubled at the thought.


End file.
